Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM
Our Capstone process underwent a new iteration this year. With the class split in half with students who are learning at a distance, and students who are local to Southwestern College, Jennifer Albright and I decided to have the distance students create their own process. Click here to see their zine, Pilgrimage.
And read on below to hear their description of the process and their creation. Click here to see and read about the local students mural painting process.
The process for the creation of our Zine began at the beginning of the quarter when we first commiserated over struggles that we had experienced while attending SWC and discovered similar imagery that was sprinkled throughout all of our artworks. As we would not be able to paint a mural due to distance issues, we decided that we would try to convey our message through the use of Zines. After working on our individual Zines throughout the quarter, we used the Sunday meeting to compile our images into one big Zine with the use of PowerPoint. To make the presentation cohesive, we intermingled the slides based on relevance and what felt right. We grouped slides of the same kind so that no individual Zine was spotlighted. This helped to eliminate the appearance of the presentation being disjointed.
What we produced is an e-Zine mural entitled, “Pilgrimage.” It’s a visual experience of how we all metaphorically hiked the mountains in the Southwest as we journeyed through the Master’s Degree program at SWC. The “Beginning” slide depicts our embarkment upon this journey. This path transitions into mountain images portraying the difficulties experienced individually and collectively through the program. These mountain images are clustered together and come to a metaphorical peak. Then the journey trails off with written reflections, and the lasting mantra “keep on pushing.” We established a common theme for the outline that included warm colors and symbols of our individual journeys at SWC.
The main symbol present throughout the collective Zine was mountains, representing an uphill climb. Other symbols present were shapes occupying background space, fire, and personalized imagery and tropes. Be it imagery of mountains or personalized symbols, our group collectively reflected on the struggle and transformative progress made through this degree program. All components of the collective Zine are original art pieces by each member of the group, whether handcrafted or digitally created. There were vibrant colors contrasted with black, blue and neutral shades. The five of us distance students hope the misconceptions of telehealth can be dismantled after witnessing our process. The group would like others to respect the grueling process we endured that took blood, sweat, and tears.
Graciela, Salma, Niccole, Allese, Danielle
About the Moderator
Magdalena is core faculty in the Art Therapy and Counseling program at Southwestern college. She is also the director of the new distance learning program in Art Therapy for Clinical Professionals. Magdalena graduated from SWC's AT/CN program in 2009.
